Rafe Mendez, 58, retired wildland fire crew boss with a scar slashing through the left side of his jaw from the 2018 Mesa Verde blaze, had entered the annual Gunnison VFW chili cookoff every year since his wife Elara died three years prior. The recipe was hers, mostly, though he’d tweaked it to cut back on the cumin she’d intentionally overloaded just to watch him make a sour face mid-bite. He leaned against the folding table next to his dented crockpot, sipping a Coors Banquet, nodding politely as neighbors sampled the chili and murmured compliments, keeping his distance like he always did. Letting anyone get close felt like cheating, like he was erasing the 27 years he’d had with Elara, so he stuck to small talk and left every community event as soon as he could.
He spotted Lila halfway through the event, hovering by the entryway, wiping flecks of mud off her scuffed work boots. She was Elara’s second cousin, 52, ran a beekeeping supply shop outside Portland, he’d only seen her a handful of times, mostly at family weddings back when Elara was still alive. She was wearing a well-worn plaid flannel, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, a faint smudge of beeswax on the soft skin of her left wrist, silver streaks laced through the dark braid slung over her shoulder. When she saw him, she smiled, and the gap between her two front teeth that he’d forgotten about glinted in the fluorescent light of the hall.
She wandered over, said she’d driven 12 hours because her mom had mentioned Rafe was entering the cookoff, that she’d always loved Elara’s chili. She dipped a cracker into his crockpot, took a bite, and hummed so loud the guy running the 50/50 raffle glanced over. She said it was better than Elara’s, and Rafe’s jaw tightened, ready to snap at her for disrespecting his wife’s recipe, until she laughed and said Elara had called her once, bragging about how she dumped extra cumin in every batch just to mess with him, that she’d always wanted Rafe to make his own version once she was gone. The knot in his chest loosened so fast he felt lightheaded.
They leaned against the table side by side, talking, and every time she reached for a cracker or a napkin, her elbow brushed his. He could smell pine soap and raw honey on her, sharp and sweet, cutting through the thick fog of chili powder and cigarette smoke and cheap beer hanging in the VFW hall. He found himself telling her about the fire season he’d spent up in Yellowstone, about the way the pines sounded when they exploded in flame, about how Elara used to leave care packages of homemade cookies on his truck seat before he deployed to a fire. He didn’t talk about Elara to anyone, not anymore, but it felt easy with Lila, like she already knew half the stories anyway.
When the anxiety hit, it hit hard. He realized he was leaning in closer to her than he’d leaned to anyone in three years, that he was paying attention to the way her laugh crinkled the corners of her eyes, and his gut twisted so bad he thought he might be sick. He mumbled something about checking the coolant line on his old Ford F-150, started to step away, and she caught his wrist, her fingers warm and calloused from handling hive frames. “Don’t run,” she said, soft enough only he could hear. “Elara would have kicked your ass for hiding from the world this long.”
He froze, rooted to the linoleum floor, as the emcee announced the cookoff winners over the loudspeaker. He got second place, and Lila whooped so loud half the hall turned to stare, clapping so hard her palms turned pink. She grabbed his hand, tugged him toward the exit, said he owed her a beer for driving all that way to try his chili. The air outside was crisp, October cold, the aspen leaves lining the parking lot crunching under their boots, the sky streaked tangerine and lavender as the sun dropped behind the mountains. He grabbed the six pack he’d stashed in his truck bed cooler, and they sat on the tailgate, passing a can back and forth.
She shifted closer, her shoulder pressing firm to his, and he didn’t pull away. He reached out, brushed the smudge of beeswax off her wrist with his thumb, his skin lingering on hers for a beat longer than necessary, and she didn’t flinch. “I’m scared,” he said, quiet enough that the wind almost carried the words away. She nodded, said she was too, that her ex-husband had left her for a 28-year-old barista two years prior, that she hadn’t talked to anyone that made her feel this light since.
The VFW loudspeakers flipped over to old Johnny Cash, the low thrum of Folsom Prison Blues drifting through the parking lot, and a group of kids down the block set off a handful of fireworks, bright red and blue sparks bursting over the tops of the pine trees. Rafe took a sip of beer, glanced over at her, watched the light from the fireworks gild the edges of her braid, and for the first time in three years, he didn’t feel a stab of guilt for smiling at someone who wasn’t Elara. When she passed him the beer a second time, her fingers brushed his palm, and he laced his through hers for three full seconds before he let go.
